When Will Tesla Cars Drive Themselves?

Tesla vehicles have amazing technology. They have big screens, real-time traffic, over-the-air updates, streaming music, you can play video games, and even watch Netflix movies (while parked). 

More to the point of this blog entry, they also have Autopilot. Autopilot is an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that includes:

• Traffic-Aware Cruise Control: Matches the speed of your car to that of the surrounding traffic
• Autosteer: Assists in steering within a clearly marked lane, and uses traffic-aware cruise control

As an ADAS, it is clear that the driver is required to be alert. This system is intended to ease cognitive load and allow the driver to have better situational awareness. It is *not* intended to allow drivers to use their phones or take naps. 

The next level up from Autopilot is Full Self-Driving (FSD) Capability. This includes: 

• Navigate on Autopilot (Beta): Actively guides your car from a highway’s on-ramp to off-ramp, including suggesting lane changes, navigating interchanges, automatically engaging the turn signal, and taking the exit
• Auto Lane Change: Assists in moving to an adjacent lane on the highway when Autosteer is engaged
• Autopark: Helps automatically parallel or perpendicular park your car, with a single touch
• Summon: Moves your car in and out of a tight space using the mobile app or key
• Smart Summon: Your car will navigate more complex environments and parking spaces, maneuvering around objects as necessary to come find you in a parking lot.
• Traffic and Stop Sign Control (Beta): Identifies stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows your car to a stop on approach, with your active supervision
• Autosteer on city streets (coming soon as I write this)

There are a few important things to point out about "FSD Capability." The first thing to note that all of these features still require driver supervision and many of them are still in beta or even in limited release beta. That is to say, this is not yet a fully autonomous vehicle, despite the FSD monicker. The second thing to point out is the word "capability." A piece of paper is capable of being folded into a paper airplane, but that does not make a flat sheet of paper an airplane. So when you buy the FSD Capability, you are buying a sheet of paper with some folds in it, and the promise that there will be updates to finish folding it the rest of the way.

If that's what you want to buy, good on you, go for it. I did and I've been very happy with the progress of the FSD Capability. I just wanted to paint a clear picture that when you buy the FSD Capability, you are (currently) still getting an ADAS, just one with more functionality than most. 

Musk's "Coming Soon" Comments 

When will Tesla's FSD evolve from 'just' ADAS to a true fully autonomous vehicle? Elon Musk has been asked this question in several public forums. Here are some of his replies:

[12.22.2015] “We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.”

[10.19.2016] Discussing the new Autopilot hardware, Musk said, "It is fully capable of Level 5 autonomy, a big step forward." *Note the work 'capable' verses something like 'functional.'

[06.12.2018] Tesla’s cars will in August suddenly activate “full self-driving features,” the company's chief executive Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday. "Features" meaning some subset of "Full."

[10.21.2019] "Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road"

[07.09.2020] "I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year." Where "basic functionallity" is again a subset of "full".

[01.28.2021] "Basically, I'm highly confident the car will drive itself with reliability in excess of a human this year. ...we need to probably do a little bit more work to prove that Tesla Autopilot is capable of full self-driving, which, I think, will become obvious later this year."

As you can see, in statement after statement, Musk had high confidence that FSD-Level 5 will happen soon (where "soon" is any time 2017 or later). I submit to you that all forward-looking statements about something that's never been done before should be taken with a grain of salt. Additionally, these statements are often made under a Safe Habor Clause that provides legal protection for optimistic speculation. Careful parsing allows you to find the caveats (e.g., 'I think', capable, features, basic...), that a quick enthusiastic read (or an intentionally malicious misread) will miss. If you want a vehicle to drive you from A to B tomorrow, I suggest that you take the train, a bus, use Lyft, or hire a chauffeur rather than buy FSD.

           

If you want a car that can drive you around right now, while you look at your phone, FSD is not it. Take a Lyft instead. 

If, however, you want to be involved in testing one of the most exciting robotic systems that humankind has ever created (and you don't mind continuing to be a responsible driver), then FSD might be worth your hard-earned money. Today, using the Smart Summon feature a Tesla vehicle can (usually) pull out of a parking space and drive to you in a parking lot. This is a nice feature to have if your parking spot has flooded or you have large/heavy items that you don't want to lug through the parking lot.

           

If you want to test one of the most exciting neural net robotics systems that humankind has ever created (while continuing to be an attentive driver), then FSD is worth the money.

So When Will Full Autonomy Arrive?

In other less optimistic statements, Musk has said that they'll have to "chase the nines" to get to full autonomy. I think these are the more realistic statements from Musk that acknowledge that there are many many edge-cases that they will need to resolve and that will be a long process. Musk is a perennial optimist and I don't think his estimates are meant to be deceptive. Rather, they are ambitious goal statements that he believes to be possible. Musk excites, motivates, and manages using moonshots and urgency. It is a proven formula at Tesla (and SpaceX). They have accomplished things that no other company has ever achieved (just not on the publicized timeline). It is also important to note that even though Musk's initial target was 2017 and full autonomy has still not arrived, Tesla has continued to make forward strides every year. Sometimes, when you are doing something for the first time, there are challenges that you didn't even know existed until you get there and encounter them (unknown unknowns). 

Stop Sidestepping the Question! When Will It Happen? Give Me A Date!

It is impossible to predict. Neural nets have a strange tendency to be incompetent for many many iterations and then, suddenly, something clicks and they do amazing things far surpassing your expectations. This means the next build could be the one, but I've gone on record saying that August of 2027 is when the scales tip and it is more likely than not that FSD (full autonomy, Level 5, remove the steering wheel, take a nap and wake-up at your destination) will emerge. That does not mean that it won't exist in limited forms before then, nor does it mean that it impossible before that date. It's just a probability distribution. If you want to know when it is 99% likely, move your bet to 2040.

Disclosure: I'm Long Tesla

Powerwalls During A Power Outage (Valentine's Day Blackout)

Downed trees in Oregon
Photo Credit: Wade Radcliffe

Our Powerwalls were installed on December 31st, 2020. Just six weeks later, we've had our first power outage. This was our chance to see how well they perform. 

There's an ice storm in the area. Freezing rain has glazed over the bare winter branches in our yard. Storm Watch is enabled and the Powerwalls are charged to 100%. Over 250,000 homes in the state have been hit with power outages. Some have been without power for 48 hours as I write this.

On the evening of Valentine's Day, our neighborhood joined many others in the darkness. The streetlights went out. Looking up and down the block, the houses were dark, with the exception of ours. 

The power had been out for about 5 minutes before we even noticed. We didn't notice because, in our house, things had continued normally. The Powerwalls had taken over and they were running everything. The lights were still on, TV was on, the internet was even still working, and the washing machine was running.

We had no idea how long the power would be out. The sun had set for the day; we were not going to have any solar support. With grid out and no solar, it was all up to the Powerwalls. 

The first thing I did was run around the house turning off and unplugging nonessentials. As I mentioned above, the washing machine was running. It was in the final spin cycle, so we opted to let it finish the run. This was one nice benefit to having Powerwalls. If we didn't have them, the washing machine would have been stopped mid-cycle. This could have left us with soaking wet soapy clothes. Once the washing machine finished, our consumption rate dropped.

I collected data periodically for the charge level of the Powerwalls during the outage. You can see it in the graph below:

After 2 hours and 35 minutes, our power was restored. We were lucky that our outage was just a short one. A few minutes after the power was restored, the Powerwalls handed the load of our home back to the grid. Then as if to test the newly restored grid, the Powerwall started to recharge. The Powerwalls were recharging at a rate of 10 kW, with the other loads in our house, we peaked at a 16kW grid load. After ~20 minutes the Powerwalls were recharged and our grid load dropped to a normal rate. 

How Long Will The Powerwalls Keep Lights On?

Now that the outage is over, it's time to see how long the Powerwalls would have lasted. Luckily, our outage was only a few hours and the Powerwalls were never below 80%, so to determine how long they'd last in total, we'll have to do some extrapolation. To do this, we'll use a few methods. We'll add a trendline to the above graph and see where it lands. We'll look at our consumption data (percentage-wise and kWh-wise) and do the math based on the Powerwall capacity. 

Method One: Lineraly 

This one is a simple analysis. We used 19% of our charge in 2 hours 35 minutes. Taking this linearly, the total charge would have lasted about 5 times that duration or 13 Hours 35 Minutes. 

This, however, includes the time that the washing machine was running and so is not a very accurate estimate.

Method 1 Result: 13 Hours 35 Minutes 

Method Two: Trendline

For this trendline, I selected a 3-period trailing moving average. This allowed the washing machine period to be ignored and projected forward based on the latter portion of the sample. 

This trendline predicts that we'd have drained the Powerwalls by 11AM the next morning. This is just ~18 hours. It's longer than Method 1, but not as long as my pre-purchase calculation which led to our decision to buy three Powerwalls. The goal was 24 hours of backup.

Method 2 Result: 18 Hours

Method Three: Consumption

The other methods were tops-down. This one is bottom-up. It usually a good idea to try to look at things from a few angles to see the bigger picture. For this one, we need to know how much capacity we have. We have 3 Powerwalls. Each Powerwall has 13.5 kWh of usable energy, so that's 40.5 kWh. 

Looking at our usage data from the Tesla app during the outage, it says that we used 3.375 kWh during the outage. That's an average rate of 1.3kW. At that rate, 40.5 kWh would last 31 hours. 

Method 3 Result: 31 Hours 

Conclusion

I was very happy that we had Powerwalls when a blackout hit our neighborhood. It allowed us to keep the lights (and heat) on during the outage. Our outage was less than 3 hours long and the Powerwalls covered it completely with more than 80% charge remaining when the grid came back online. 

We used 3 methods to estimate the total duration the Powerwalls would have powered our home. The most pessimistic estimate was 13 hours 35 minutes. The most optimistic estimate was 31 hours. To determine which one is more accurate, we'll need a larger sample set. The truth is likely in the middle and if we needed to stretch things further, we could have reduced our home load to just the bare essentials, until the sun comes out and gives us a little solar power support.

Disclosure: I am long Tesla

The ICEBerg :: Legacy Automakers Unable To Let Go of Their ICEy Ways

Just like the Titanic headed towards an iceberg, the legacy automakers are headed towards a disaster. The automakers, like the ill-fated ship, have been in a fog; their's is a fog of uncertainty rather than a literal fog. The uncertainty for automakers has been around electric vehicles (EV). Will there be customer demand for EVs? Will the technology be dependable? Will it be profitable? Or should they stick to internal combustion engines (ICE) that they used to build their business? 

Over the last decade, these questions have been answered; the fog has cleared; EV ranges have increased, the charging times have decreased, charging networks have proliferated, EVs are the future. Yet, the legacy automakers are unwilling or unable to steer away from this looming collision that I've dubbed the ICEberg. 

The combustion engine was once the machine that made the automakers profitable companies, now it is the anchor around their necks, anchoring them to the past, preventing them from driving into the electric future. It is the ICEberg into which many will crash.

Bloomberg recently reported that EVs are about to cross the tipping point where their initial price will be lower than similar class gas-powered cars. This (combined with the lower running costs and smoother, quieter ride) will mean that the majority of new car sales will quickly transition to electric during this decade. Once a tipping point is reached, the world changes quickly; companies that are caught on their heels could miss out and join the ranks of those that dominated one era but fell into obscurity after a transition.

Despite the evidence of this upcoming sea change, many of the largest automakers are bound and determined to ignore or downplay the looming change. Even when they acknowledge the importance to embrace the future, as VW's Chief Executive Herbert Diess has, the company culture makes it nearly impossible to change. 

Let's look at two of the biggest automakers and see how they are dealing with this: Toyota, in denial; and VW, in culture shock. 

Toyota

At Toyota's recent annual meeting, the company's CEO, Akio Toyoda, went on an anti-EV rant. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the things Toyoda said included claims that EVs were more polluting than gasoline-powered vehicles. This "longtail argument" has repeatedly been proven false by several credible studies.

Toyoda claimed that EVs are too expensive and that government EV mandates will price people out of new cars. It's true today that you cannot buy a sub $20k car with 300 miles of range, but that will not remain the case. Batteries have recently dropped below the $100 per kWh mark and they are continuing to decline, and when fueling and maintenance cost factors are included, EVs are already more affordable to own in many categories.

Toyoda's attitude has permeated the company and it shows in their marketing campaigns as well. See the ad to the right that bashes on EV recharging times. This ignores the fact that most charging happens overnight while you sleep. You wake up each morning with a 'full tank.' It also ignores the fact that on-the-go DC fast charging has gone from 50kW (CHAdeMO v1), to 120kW, to 270kW, to 350kW (CCS 1,000V) over the last decade. So today, you can recharge significantly faster than you could a decade ago.

As batteries chemistries continue to become more hearty and packs continue to get bigger, they'll become capable of even faster charging. Again, Toyoda seems to be willfully ignorant of this trend or intentionally spreading anti-EV information. 

Instead of talking about the convenience of charging at home or the environmental benefits of charging from an ever-greening grid (or even solar from your own roof), Toyota is putting out deceptive ads about “Self Charging” hybrids. 

This is a major inflection point in the auto industry. Toyota has been innovative in the past, but they are not currently displaying this innovative capability. Rather than trying to surf this EV wave, they are trying to hold back the tide. They should ask Kodak and Blockbuster how well that strategy worked. 

Perhaps Toyoda is not as anti-EV as these statements seem. One hypothesis is that Toyota is working on several EV projects behind the curtain. These projects, however, are not yet ready for prime time. They could be mass-produced today, but the trend in battery price reduction means that it would be more profitable for Toyota to produce EVs in 2025. When this profitability threshold is reached, then Toyota will announce their new product lines. They back-peddle on all the anti-EV statements by saying something like, "that was true at the time, but our new battery breakthrough eliminates all of the EV drawbacks..." This is the anti-Osborne effect method, downplay anything that you are not currently selling, even if you have similar products in development. 

Volkswagen 

VW is in a different place than Toyota. VW's Chief Executive, Herbert Diess, wants to go all-in on EVs. His efforts to reform the company have met with resistance from many levels within the company and in their dealership ranks. Even after the shameful events of Dieselgate, many within VW fight to retain their fossil fuel ways. Diess, frustrated with this resistance, demanded a vote of confidence in his leadership. He asked the board to let him lead the company into the future or send him packing. 

Powerful directors of various units within the company don't want to see VW change over to an EV company because it could mean the end of their department. EVs are fundamentally simpler machines than internal combustion systems. There are no pistons, no intake valves, no spark plugs, no crankshafts, no gearbox, no oil pan, no exhaust system, no catalytic converter; often there's no transmission... each of these are fiefdoms within the company and when you think your career is tied to a department, you'll fight to keep that department alive regardless of the CEO's vision. Other than the paint department, no one is safe. 

Speaking of jobs, VW's workers are mostly union employees. The union does not want to see layoffs and salary reductions. However, if the company is going to reinvent itself, that's going to mean rebuilding the company, which includes writing off stranded assets. All of this will be expensive. The company will have several years of little to no profitability as they transform. These lean years will mean fights with the union over jobs and wages. It will also mean unhappy shareholders. If you bought VW stock for its dividend payout, then you've already been disappointed when it dropped from 6.50 euros to 4.80 euros. We don't know what the future will hold, but I'm willing to bet that the dividend will continue on this downward trend as they have to build new factories or retool old ones for battery pack and electric motor production; as they have to pay severance packages; as they have to buy companies with the software skills for a modern computer-on-wheels car company. 

Let's not forget about VW's dealers. VW's marketing has been heavily advertising their ID.3 EV, talking about how battery-powered cars fight against climate change, and how VW is a pioneer in the drive to saying goodbye to Diesel and gasoline. Greenpeace Germany wanted to see if the dealerships reflected this messaging, so they sent secret-shoppers into dealerships around the country to see what the salespeople were saying. They visited 50 dealerships. Greenpeace found that if the secret shopper said they were interested in an EV, only eight dealers recommended the ID.3. If the secret shopper didn't mention EVs, then only 2 dealers even suggested the ID.3 as something that the shopper should consider. Despite being independently owned, dealerships and the salespeople that work there are the face of the company. If you want to buy a VW, you go to a VW dealership and talk to these salespeople. If they are not promoting EVs, even to customers that come in asking about EVs, then sales of VW's EV line will suffer. VW has a good EV in the ID.3, yet 84% of dealers did not recommend the car, even when shoppers asked about EVs.

VW is not the first automaker to encounter EV resistance at their dealerships. Dealerships are independently owned. They are not required to toe the company line. Much like the fiefdoms within a company, they act in their own best interest. Dealerships make most of their profits from service rather than sales. Sales can even be a loss leader for service. EVs, however, don't require much service relative to their ICE counterparts. In an EV, there are no spark plugs to change, no fuel filters, no oil changes... All resulting in few service visits and less service revenue. If EVs are not profitable for dealerships, they are more likely to steer people to the gas-powered cars that are profitable for them. 

Given this, the dealership salespeople are far more likely to repeat the anti-EV FUD that's circulated by groups with a vested interest in maintaining the fossil-fueled status quo. And this is exactly what the Greenpeace study found. When secret shoppers asked questions about EVs, nearly half of the answers were, at best, an ignorant “I don't know,” or at worse misinformation. Several salespeople volunteered various fearmongering myths about EVs to discourage shoppers from buying them.

Volkswagen is an 83-year-old automaker. They have a deep-set culture. A culture of making Diesel and gasoline cars; a culture where dealerships have an expectation for cars that need service; a culture where investors expect dividends; a culture where directors and vice presidents expect their departments to grow and thrive (or at least survive).  

Turning this behemoth into a modern high tech company will not be an easy feat. It's a culture problem. This is far more difficult to deal with than a technological problem. Every time the company promotes EVs as zero-emission or as better for the environment, it's an admission that their other products are pollution emitting and bad for the planet. They have products that some people at the company have spent their entire career developing, refining, honing. Being asked to recast that legacy as polluting and harmful is a pill too big for some to swallow. Some people within the company might see this as spitting on the sum total of the company history and all of their work for a current "fad" that "won't work" long term.

At the start of this VW section, I said that Diess called for a vote of confidence in his leadership. The board sided with Diess and he currently has their backing for “rigorously pressing forward with the largest transformation in the history of Volkswagen.” Diess went on to say: “In the upcoming years, we will continue to invest in electromobility, digitalization, and battery technology. At the same time, substantially reduce fixed costs and material costs throughout the Group in all brands and regions in order to ensure Volkswagen’s future viability.” We'll see if Diess can overcome the massive inertia within the company and dealerships.

Dealing With Disruption  

Disruption is not common in the auto industry, but it is common in the high-tech world. Maybe automakers can look there for some examples of coping methods. In the last few decades, Microsoft has reinvented or augmented itself several times. In the early 1990s, they were an operating system and office applications company (and they were ignoring the internet). Then in May of 1995, Bill Gates sent his famous “Internet Tidal Wave” company memo.  In it, he said, “I want to make clear that our focus on the Internet is crucial to every part of our business.” He went on to explain that they would not have an “Internet division”; instead, Gates expected every one of the company's products to embrace the internet. Later in 2001, Microsoft again added a new direction for the company with the Xbox gaming console. Then in 2010, they expanded into enterprise cloud with Microsoft Azure. Oh, and don't forget their failed phone efforts. This phone effort shows that you don't have to win them all, but the effort itself (win or lose) is a sign that they are not just complacently resting on their laurels. 

When you are in an industry that has a major disruption every decade or so, then when the next one comes along, you have leadership and employees within the company that dealt with the last one. There's a collective memory, there are toned organizational muscles ready for the fight. The auto industry has no such history, but perhaps they can learn from the industries that have this skill. For example, just as Gates did with his Tidal Wave memo, Diess could author an “Electric Vehicle Tidal Wave” memo to all of VW Group. The memo would set company-wide expectations that all departments are to be EV departments. All employee/executive bonuses would be tied to the company's EV sales growth. Similarly, there are ways that dealerships can have their incentives aligned to the parent company's EV goals.

Anyone that is not on board with this new company direction would be offered a severance package. This will be better for both the company and the employee in the long run. Long term, an employee would not be happy working someplace that they think is 'going the wrong way' and the company would be better off without people that want to anchor them to their ICE past. VW needs everyone rowing in the same direction.

Dealing With Company Culture 

A company's culture has been called its immune system. There are behaviors common in some companies that would not be tolerated in others and this is a function of their different cultures, leadership, and history. This immune system can also attack new ideas as if they were foreign invaders unless they are properly introduced into the culture.

Changing a company's culture is one of the most daunting leadership challenges. A company’s culture is not just one thing. It's how they communicate, their roles, goals, processes, shared values, practices, rituals, assumptions... all blended together in an interlocking system. 

Unless a company has a highly adaptive culture, it is unlikely that the culture will change significantly unless there is a serious shock to the system. The company has to collectively believe that the very existence of the company is at stake or else there's no motivation to do anything other than that which has worked in the past. This means that successful companies are often the ones that are most culturally ossified. This then means they are the ones least likely to adapt to market disruptions.

Success leads to complacency. Complacency leads to cultural ossification. This leads to an inability to adapt. Inability to adapt leads to extinction when things change. In the auto industry, things have just changed. 
 

Conclusion 

Above are the stories of two legacy automakers. Both are headed towards an ICEberg. On the Toyota Maru ship, the captain insists that it's not an ICEberg and they will be fine; full-steam ahead. On the Volkwagen Zerstörer ship, the fog has cleared and the captain sees the ICEberg. He is calling for the crew to turn hard to starboard. However, the crew's response is, "We've been on this heading for 83 years; why should we change now?"

As Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That's what we're witnessing. Not much has changed in the automobile industry in decades, they lack relevant strategic expertise, and they don't have a disruption-resilient culture. Even people with long careers in the auto industry have not had to deal with major disruption, let alone several hitting them at once. They may not be able to adapt despite management's strategy. Ironically, past successes are a primary reason they are not culturally equipped to deal with a radical disruption.

Over the next decade, we'll see how the transition plays out for these two titans and others in the industry. Will they maintain their status among the biggest automakers in the world or will they crash into the ICEberg and drown at sea like so many other companies that failed to change course when the world changed.

Ω

 

Alternative Analogies 

You've reached the end of the post proper. Writing this, I tried to stick with the ICEberg analogy, but a few other ideas came up. I thought I'd share the other possibilities here. 

• BlackICE: Automakers have hit a patch of BlackICE and are headed toward a cliff; unable to steer away from it
• Attractive nuisance doctrine: under tort law, this is a hazardous object that might attract and injure people. Similarly, the automakers are attracted to their status quo operations and it could be very hazardous for them. (this one is a stretch) 
• Black Hole: Automakers are sucked towards a black hole. The question is, have they crossed the event horizon? 
• Mathematical Attractor: In the mathematical field of dynamical systems, an attractor is one or more values toward which a system tends to evolve for a wide variety of starting conditions. System values that get close to the attractor values remain close even if slightly perturbed. 
• Organ Transplant Rejection: EVs would be the new organ that the automakers need to survive, but the company culture antibodies are attacking it. 

Disclosure: I am long Tesla

How Tesla's Policies Discourage Owners From Buying A Newer Tesla Vehicle

There's no question that Tesla is an innovative company. Every year they have new features and new products. Many of these new features are via over-the-air (OTA) software updates. This is one of the great things about owning a Tesla. These upgrades keep ownership fresh and exciting. 

From the title, you might have assumed that this post would advocate for Tesla to end OTA updates. That's not the case, far from it. Rather, this post focuses on other policies that might make people think twice about trading in their current Tesla vehicle for a new one. 

Over the years, Tesla has had many offerings that are no longer available such as free Supercharging for life and free premium connectivity. If you have a car that has one of these features, you cannot buy a new car with the same benefits. If this is a feature that you use and like, you might think twice about buying a new Tesla without it.

Similarly, if you have paid for Full Self Driving (FSD) on your current vehicle, this does not carry forward to your next Tesla. You'd have to pay for it again if you wanted to upgrade to a newer Tesla vehicle and the price of FSD may have increased. The current $10,000 price tag makes this a non-trivial payment.

The last two to consider are the performance boost and range boost. In some of Tesla's vehicles, you can pay to reduce you zero to 60 time or increase your range. These two are a little more complicated in that they are not universally supported, so they may not be offered on a new vehicle that you are considering.

On the plus side, all of these items (free Supercharging for life, free premium connectivity, FSD, speed boost, range boost) should help increase the resale/trade-in value of your old car, but that's only a small consolation. It's really nice to take a road trip and know that you won't have a 'fuel' bill waiting for you when you get home. It's nice to stream Netflix and get live traffic information without a monthly connectivity bill. 

Let's look at the two examples in our garage. First, a 2016 Model X. This is an AP1 car with free lifetime Supercharging. I admit that I don't Supercharge all that often. Most days, charging happens overnight in our garage, but we have taken several summertime family road trips and the Supercharger network makes that pretty easy to do up and down the west coast. Carefree traveling on the Supercharger network is priceless.

Next, is our 2018 Model 3. This car has FSD and free premium connectivity. 

We are considering buying a Model Y, but with the current policies, we would not be able to get free Supercharging, free premium connectivity, or FSD (without paying for it again). This makes some aspects of buying a new Tesla feel like a downgrade. I understand why Tesla changed these policies; 'free' can incentivize the wrong behavior. It can create a 'tragedy of the commons,' some people become irrational about it and would even avoid the convenience of charging up in their own garage just to use the free Supercharging... So maybe there's a compromise. 

Possible Solutions

When you trade-in a vehicle with free lifetime Supercharging or lifetime premium data, Tesla could offer 2 or 3 years of the feature for free in your new vehicle. This is not exactly, the same, but it would ease the transition and perhaps I would not cling so hard to our older vehicles that have something that we cannot include in a new purchase. 

Another option is a transfer option (for a reasonable fee). If you want to keep a given feature, you'd be able to transfer it to your next Tesla. This would be a nice way to acknowledge the support that early adopters showed to Tesla, while still allowing them to upgrade without losing a feature to which they've grown accustomed. Tesla is able to collect data about how much these features are being used and could price the transfer accordingly. 

As for FSD, it would be really nice if you could transfer this from an old vehicle to a new vehicle. I understand that Tesla makes more money if they sell it with every car, but I'm not sure this helps them overall if I and others avoid buying a new car from Tesla because the price of FSD has gone up and I don't want to pay for it a second or third time. 

Elon Musk was asked about the ability to transfer FSD in the 2020 Financial Results call. He clearly stated that they have No Plans to allow transfers. Instead, they will offer a subscription option for FSD. The FSD subscription details will be coming out soon, so (as I write this) we don't know how much it will cost. Depending on the price, this may work out for people purchasing new vehicles, but what about the hundreds of thousands of cars that are currently on the road? They would continue to have a policy that dissuades some people (like me) from buying a new Tesla. 

I hope Musk and Tesla reconsider and take some action to remove these hindrances to new vehicle purchase upgrades. The new Model X is very tempting. Stalks are so 2020 ☺

⚡🚗

Disclosure: I'm long Tesla stock
http://ts.la/patrick7819

Tesla Robotaxi Fleet - Do I Have To Buy FSD?

This post is to explore one question: 

When the Tesla Robotaxi service starts, do you need to have Full Self Driving (FSD) to participate? 

As a sidebar, we'll discuss 'when FSD will be released as v1.0?' This is the date that you could nap in the car or watch movies as it drives you around. 

In 2020, there was only one way to have the FSD feature in your car: you had to buy it. However, at customer request, Elon Musk committed that in early 2021, the option to lease FSD would be available (see tweet below). 

This means that when the Robotaxi service starts, there are three FSD-related states a car could be in:

1. FSD Purchased 
2. FSD Subscription 
3. No FSD

Some in the Tesla community have asserted that unless you are in category 1 or 2, you won't be allowed to participate in the Robotaxi network. With the subscription model, you can make a shorter-term commitment to FSD, but as I write this, the terms of the subscription have not yet been released (will it be annual, monthly, trip or distance-based...?). 

I'm proposing that Tesla will want to allow as many owners as possible to participate. That would mean allowing cars in all three categories. But this brings up a dilemma, cars in the network will be in FSD mode, but category 3 owners have not paid for FSD. This is a solvable problem. For a car that has connectivity and advanced software, this is an easily solvable problem. 

Here's how I propose it could work: When a car that has not purchased FSD or subscribed to FSD joins the Tesla network, FSD would be enabled while (and only while) the car is participating in the Tesla network. Additionally, there would be two owner payment tiers for vehicles that are participating in the network. For vehicles that have FSD, they would receive the highest tier payment. Vehicles that didn't already have FSD, would pay an FSD micro-lease payment with every trip they make. 

For example, say a fair for a trip was $5. In the highest tier, some portion of this would go to Tesla (let's assume 40% or $2) and the remaining funds (60% or $3 in our example) would go to the car owner. 

Well, if the car has to micro-lease FSD, then the percentages would be a little different. Let's see how the split might look for category 3 cars with our made-up revenue split of a $5 fare. Tesla network cut (again assuming 40% or $2), FSD micro-lease (assume 10% or $0.50), and the remaining funds (50% or $2.50) would go to the own. 

	With FSD	No FSD
Tesla Network Cut	40%	40%
FSD micro-lease	N/A (0%)	10%
Owner Funds	60%	50%

This allows all of the Tesla vehicles (that have FSD hardware) to participate in the network. This is important since you'd want a network with good coverage or it would limit the number of people interested in using it. It also rewards the Tesla owners that have paid for FSD with a little more revenue when they join the network, while still allowing people that have not purchased or leased FSD to profitably participate. 

You might be asking yourself why Tesla should get 40% when your car is the one picking customers up and dropping them off.  First, a reminder that 40% is just a number that I made up for an example, but Tesla will have expenses too. That 40% (or whatever the number turns out to really be) goes towards the app development, the servers to run the app backend, some profit margin for Tesla, and (the big one) insurance for your car while it's in the network. 

There you have it, my reasoning as to why and how non-FSD vehicles will be allowed into the Tesla Robotaxi Network. Please let me know where you think I got it right and where I'm off base. 

Before we go, I promised a sidebar on when I think the Tesla Robotaxi service will start. There are the nay-sayers that don't think FSD will happen this century. They are clearly wrong. The FSD beta is out now and there have been some impressive videos with it navigating tricky situations, so it is coming. The only question is when. On the other side, there are enthusiasts that think the steering wheel can be removed from Teslas before 2022. I fall in between these two camps. The FSD beta is impressive and this allows the long march of the nines to begin. The car will quickly be a 99% effective driver and this might seem like we're at "mission complete" but a crash every 1000 miles or so not good enough. To be a true FSD system, it has to be better at driving than the average human, better than the average taxi driver, even better than you. That will mean that it has to be at 99.99999%. It will have to be able to handle strange cases of trees falling across the road, things flying off trucks, double-parked cars, drunk drivers... The list of things that you handle by experience and intuition are difficult but not impossible for an AI to learn given enough training and corner-case examples. Considering all of this, my estimate of when FSD will be ready and legally allowed nationally in the US is 2027. I hope I'm wrong and it happens sooner, but if I had to bet, that's where I'm placing my chips. 

Disclosure: I'm long Tesla stock
http://ts.la/patrick7819

Tesla Embedded Flash Upgrade (eMMC)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently sent a letter to Tesla saying it has determined that the screens are defective and pose a safety risk because they can cause backup cameras to go dark and defrosters to malfunction. This issue impacts about 159,000 Model S and X vehicles built between 2012 and 2018. 

The problem is not with the screen directly, rather it is with a small flash memory chip in the control unit for the screen. The system reads and writes to this memory often for many activities. As the chip begins to fail, these read and write operations often have to be repeated several times before they are successful and this causes the touchscreen to be slow, unresponsive, or to fail completely. 

Voluntary Recall Covered Most But Not All

Tesla is aware of the issue and sent the above letter to impacted vehicles in November of 2020. Tesla says they are fixing it at no cost and if you've already paid for it, you'll get a reimbursement. Great, problem solved, right? You might notice, in the second paragraph, that Tesla has some caveats. The first caveat is 8 years. Well, it's 2021 and the problem is only in vehicles in 2012-2018, so that's no problem. Tesla didn't make too many cars in 2012 compared to later years and 2012 vehicles have likely already had this done, so their owners are likely getting a refund. The second caveat, on the other hand, is 100k miles; that can be a problem. There are some road warriors out there that love to drive or drive a significant number of miles related to their employment. These folks could easily be over the 100k mark in a 2013+ vehicle.

Because Tesla's voluntary recall from November left out some customers that did nothing wrong, NHTSA is pressuring them to do the right thing and cover everyone. Repairing this only costs $120 in parts for the new flash chip. And, Tesla offers an upgrade to the entire media control unit (MCU). The newer MCU infotainment system allows owners to play more games and to watch Netflix. This means that some people that come in for this, might opt to upgrade for $2500. This means that Tesla could actually make money from this and customers would have a more capable vehicle.  

I don't know what percentage of these 159,000 owners fell into the over 100k miles and how many were (like me) under the 100k mark. 

When I had my 2016 Model X in for service they replace my flash for no cost to me but there were some things that I think you should be aware of if you take your Tesla in for the eMMC upgrade. 

Getting The eMMC Upgrade

As mentioned above, my 2016 Model X recently had the eMMC upgrade. The 8Gig flash was replaced with a 64Gig flash unit. A larger flash will mean that the reads and writes will be distributed over 8 times more space and each sector will have less wear and tear. This alone will improve the lifespan of the unit. Additionally, Tesla has made some software updates to be more selective about what they write to the unit. Hackers have monitored the traffic and found that they were writing a lot of unnecessary kernel debug information.

So happened when I received the upgrade? 

I asked if there was anything that I needed to know. They said, "No, the fob is on the dash and that the invoice will show up in your account soon." I hopped in my car for the drive home. Whoa, the first thing that I noticed was the nav was in bright day mode. I keep the display in the much cooler dark mode (as everyone should). And the map was in gaudy satellite mode. I quickly switched this to the much cleaner roadmap and dark mode. Okay, now that I look at the screen without being grossed out. I tapped nav to select home and it was no longer there. This is not surprising, they replaced a memory card, so I should expect the vehicle to 'forget' some things.

On the drive home I was on the freeway and attempted to turn on Autopilot. It refused to start. Ugh, it's a beta feature and you have to explicitly accept/enable it in the software controls before you can enable it. I had to drive myself the entire way - what is this the 19 hundreds, can you believe it!☺ It was five o'clock traffic and using AP really removes a lot of the traffic stress. I missed having it.

I finally made it home and now I knew there were a few more things they should have told me at the service center. It was time to take account of what needed to be restored. Here is the list of things that my vehicle 'forgot' and 'remembered' as part of this upgrade: 

Things it forgot:

• Autopilot (had to acknowledge it's beta)
• Its name
• All driver profiles including Easy Entry and Curb View
• Game scoreboard/progress
• Garage door opening/closing (HomeLink)
• Wifi settings/password
• Screen mode: Night mode, satellite view/road view
• App/mobile access setting ('Controls' and then 'Safety & Security')
• Location Favorites
• Recent Trips

Things it remembered:

• Streaming favorites/stations
• Binnacle settings

Seems odd that it remembered my streaming stations, but forgot driver profiles. 

I asked my service advisor why they did save and restore these settings. They said that they have a tool that attempts to read the old flash chip and then place those settings into the unit, but the old units are often too corrupt to read. I'm not sure I buy this explanation since the profiles, for example, were still working so this section of the old flash was still readable. Perhaps their tool is not as persistent as it should be or does not cool the flash to improve its readability... 

So, if you go in to get this upgrade, know that will likely lose all of your settings. If you happen to have a few restored, count yourself lucky, but at least you won't be disappointed if you lose them all if you come in with that expectation. 

Profile In The Cloud

Musk has said that they are working on a feature to move driver profiles into your cloud account. This would be a nice addition. It would allow you to hop into any Tesla (like a loaner) and automatically have the car know your seat/mirror/steering wheel settings as well as your favorite streaming services... This would be very handy and it would eliminate the above problem.

Disclosure: I'm long Tesla

The Tesla Cycle

Today (January 7th), Tesla stock blasted through $800 per share. As it did, Elon Musk's net worth surpassed Jeff Bezos' and Musk became the richest person in the world. 

As you know from our recent post, we've installed Tesla Powerwalls on our home. Today, was the day that I paid for those Powerwalls. 

Putting these two things together, I found it ironic that I was paying a handsome sum to Tesla on the same day that Musk made this achievement. I'm not saying that I should be able to skip the payment just because Musk made guap, just noting the irony. I'm getting a great product from a great company and I'm happy to pay the agreed-upon price, especially since my realized gains from Tesla stock investing is paying for these Powerwalls.

I have been investing in Tesla for a long time. Musk might be the richest person in the world now, but he's also made a lot of other people rich along the way. Some of those people are like me, both investors and customers. I don't want to know how much stock I'd own today if I'd held TSLA in 2016 instead of buying a Model X. Owning the X has been incredibly rewarding, I have no regrets.

This owner shareholder combination got me thinking about how many people were in a similar situation. They were able to afford Tesla products in part because of how well their TSLA investments have done. Or they became shareholders because of how much they love the product and/or mission. This is a positive feedforward system: owners become shareholders, shareholders become customers. Then customer/shareholders sell a fraction of Tesla stock holding to buy a Tesla product, Tesla sales increase, Tesla share price increases, remaining Tesla stock holding value increases... rinse and repeat. I'm calling this the Tesla Cycle. Of course, there is no such thing as a perpetual motion cash machine, nor am I suggesting that you take this as stock advice. But we've been able to do this multiple times to buy multiple Tesla vehicles and our Powerwalls and I wonder how much of Tesla's growth to-date has been driven by this cycle. 

If millions of people are customer/shareholders, this could be a significant flywheel that has brought in significant revenue and growth to the company. If you've hung out on Tesla twitter or the Tesla forums, you've seen that, for many people, Tesla is the first (or only) stock that they've ever owned, some opened a stock account specifically to buy TSLA. Similarly, in these online forums, you've seen that a Tesla car was often the most expensive thing (or at least car) that many of the Tesla fans have ever purchased. Tesla has throngs of fans, if even a small percentage of them are participating in the "Tesla Cycle," it could be a significant factor in the company's growth over the past few years.

Do you think there's anything to this? Did Tesla's stock growth turn individual investors into Tesla product owners? Did the love of the product turn customers into investors? Have you sold Tesla stock to buy something from Tesla?